The Journey – Cruising with Lake Union Sea Ray, part 2

The essence of cruising was easy to find when the boats.com team joined a Sea Ray 460 Sundancer for a leisurely trip south from Seattle to Tacoma.

By Staff

July 31, 2017

The boats.com team tried on the cruising lifestyle for size recently and learned just how good a fit it can be for Seattle area cruisers. En route to Tacoma aboard a 460 Sundancer, we covered a lot of territory and shot a whole lot of video and photos along the way. The second video in the boats.com series on Cruising with Lake Union Sea Ray documents the sights along the way.

Jace Romine, the service manager at Lake Union Sea Ray, and his girlfriend Natalie, were our guides as we meandered south one afternoon. We left around mid-day, later than planned, but they showed us how simple it was to go through the locks, make a pit stop at Shilshole Bay Marina, take a high-speed dash down by the Seattle waterfront, and then change the pace and linger for an hour in Port Blakely, a beautiful, quiet harbor on Bainbridge Island.

Bainbridge Island’s Port Blakely suited our image makers for its quiet beauty, and on a night we weren’t expected elsewhere, it would have been a perfect place to drop the hook. Neil Rabinowitz photo.

Nor far south, at Blake Island, we saw that there are public moorings available and would have liked to go ashore and explore the state park if time had allowed. The island is about 8 miles from Seattle and a very quick run from almost anywhere on either side of the south sound.

The west passage along Vashon Island was well-protected, and we were tempted to swing through Gig Harbor, just to have a look, but with the sun setting to the west we turned toward Tacoma and saw Mount Rainier standing tall to the southeast, lit up by the sun’s rays—just one of many awe-inspiring peaks that frequently greets Puget Sound cruisers.

It was a special day of experiencing nature, feeling the boat underway, sharing stories, and you never wish to see days like that end, but as we reached Tacoma in the early evening, we realized we were both tired and refreshed. We landed downtown at quiet Dock Street marina and were greeted by cruisers from 20-some boats meeting up for Lake Union Sea Ray’s rendezvous. Some were long-time cruising buddies; others were meeting each other for the first time. We interviewed several the next day for the third video in our series, “The Destination – Cruising with Lake Union Sea Ray.”